


from up above and down below

by weatheredlaw



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Cesarean Section, Childbirth, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8769295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: “Right then. I’ll just remind you that you made the choice to go all the way across the damn ocean to marry someone then, Mr. Scamander. Couldn’t find a nice, agreeable English girl, could you?”“I don’t actually know any agreeable English women,” Newt says, and goes back to Tina.





	

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy. okay. so anon prompted newt and tina having a baby, and i literally don't know why i make things so damn hard on myself, but i spent an hour doing research on cesareans in the 20's. real thing, obviously, and precisely when they started doing the more efficient horizontal cut to make things easier on the surgeons and mothers (i'm a c-section baby so this stuff is super interesting to me.) anyway apparently i can't just DO SOMETHING REGULAR for two seconds so, uh, have some bIRTH TRAUMA? SORT OF? everyone lives, everything's fine. i figure surgery is a thing, but magic probably makes it easier. recovery time's not great, but definitely not as bad as it could be.

_for all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you_

 

* * *

 

“ _Mr. Scamander, for the last time your wife is not one of your beasts!_ ” The healer brandishes an odd looking metal thing in Newt’s face. “One more _quip_ about poultices and I’ll toss you out, sir, do you hear me?”

Newt nods, a quick, “Yes, ma’am,” before the healer huffs and leaves the two of them in the delivery room.

Tina grips his hand. “Please don’t get yourself kicked out. I need—” She moans, squeezing his hand tighter. “I need you here.”

“I won’t leave.” Newt brushes the sweat-damp hair from her face. “I do promise.”

“Don’t provoke her,” she says quickly as the healer comes back into the room, a nurse in tow. Tina looks up. “Please tell me we can do this now. _Please._ ”

The healer braces a hand on Tina’s knee, checking a few things. Newt is torn between genuine curiosity and feeling rather at fault for the sudden pain that shoots up his arm from the vise-like grip Tina has on his fingers.

“Not yet, love.”

Tina _swears_ , loudly, and uses a handful of words Newt’s never quite heard before.

The healer sighs. “Americans.”

 

* * *

 

“Remember what we read. What we practiced.”

“I will _kill you_ ,” Tina says, teeth gritted, “if you open a book in this room.”

Newt smiles. “No books, I sw- _ah!_ ” Tina hand grips him so tight he feels his knuckles pop. “Tina, dear—”

“Do not. Do not finish that sentence.”

He nods. “Hold as tight as you’d like, is what I was going to say.”

Tina _howls._

 

* * *

 

Queenie had told a near fairytale about her delivery. Newt can see his sister-in-law quite clearly, actually, her toddler running through Newt and Tina’s sitting room in London, tripping and falling over the kneazel. _Just a breeze, really. Oh don’t worry,_ she’d added, looking straight at Newt. _I’m sure you’ll be very useful. Jacob was just the biggest help._

Jacob, apparently, had fainted, and not been a bother to anyone. Queenie considered this a preferable circumstance.

Their current situation is far from a fairytale, and Newt is starting to worry. Tina is near-delirious with pain and exhaustion. Labor seems to have stalled, or slowed tremendously, and Newt looks up at the healer.

“I know I’m not supposed to ask questions—”

“You’re not.”

“But is this normal?”

The healer looks at him sharply, but the deep worry lines around her mouth win over her intense annoyance with her patient’s husband. She sighs.

“We may need to…operate.”

“Oh no.” Tina shakes her head. “No, no, no, no. I don’t want that. I can—” She screams again. “I can do this, I swear I can, _I swear_ —”

“Love, you’re baby’s not in the right spot.”

“No, he’s fine. He’s perfect where he is, just not _inside_ me, I need him out.” Tina pants with exhaustion, looking to Newt. “Tell her I’m fine. Tell her I can do this, Newt.”

“Tina—” She arches her back in pain, and the healer nods.

“Right. I need your permission then, Mr. Scamander.”

“I don’t give it,” Tina says. “You don’t have my permission.”

“You are in _no state_ to consent or not to this, Mrs. Scamander.”

“Don’t you dare, Newt.” She looks at him with pleading eyes. “I can do this.”

The healer scowls. “You’re going to _kill_ yourself, girlie. And then what? Leave the man a widower, no son or daughter to speak of?” She turns to Newt. “It’s this way, sometimes. Some women, they…they want to do things the way everyone else does them. But she needs this.”

“I can’t give you my permission. Not without hers.”

The healer sighs. “Right then. I’ll just remind you that _you_ made the choice to go all the way across the damn _ocean_ to marry someone then, Mr. Scamander. Couldn’t find a nice, agreeable English girl, could you?”

“I don’t actually know any agreeable English women,” Newt says, and goes back to Tina.

 

* * *

 

She looks at him and Newt leans forward, pressing his forehead to hers. “I know what you want, Tina.”

“It was fine. They all said it was fine.”

Newt smiles. “Does it surprise you that we’d bear a difficult child together?”

She shakes her head, and Newt catches breath of laughter. “Not really.”

“I trust them here. I was born here, Tina. You’ll be alright, my dear. I know this.”

Tina swallows. “You swear?”

“I _swear._ ”

She nods. “Alright. Alright, do it then. Just…just don’t let anything happen to him.”

“Are you so sure then, that it’s a boy?”

“Yes.” She looks him in the eye. “I’ve always known.”

“How lucky for our son, to have a mother who loves him so.” Newt kisses her forehead and goes to find the healer. “She’s agreed.”

“About _damn_ time,” the woman says, and waves the nurse into the room. “Right then. You need to go, Mr. Scamander.”

“I don’t think I will.”

The healer rolls her eyes and hands him a mask. “Fine. Just…don’t look. Curtains up, girls. You talk to her on the other side. You let her know it’ll be alright.” She grips his shoulder. “You’ll be a father before too long.”

 

* * *

 

The healer hands Newt a squirming thing, barely cleaned, and says, “You need to hold him. She can’t, but you can. He needs to know you.”

Newt blinks. “He.”

“Yes, Mr. Scamander.” She waits patiently, until Newt reaches out and takes him. “You have a son.”

Newt holds the boy close, looking down at his pinched, completely new face. “Merlin’s beard.” He turns to Tina, but she is still asleep, being carefully propped up in her bed and cleaned.

“Give her just a bit,” the healer says. “She’ll wake soon. You just hold him til she does.” Newt nods, unable to really say much more than what he already has. His son cries, but almost carefully so. Newt touches his cheek, runs a thumb over the thin patch of dark hair growing from the top of his head.

“You’re like her, then,” he murmurs, smiling. “That’s quite alright with me.” He kisses his forehead, holding the boy close. “I’ll just watch you, until mummy’s awake. Papa can do that for you. I can…I can take care of you.” Newt settles into the chair by Tina’s side. “It’s quite a scary place out there. I’m sorry we couldn’t wait until the world was a bit safer for you, but here we are. Your mother is doing her best, you know. And I’m…trying. Trying very hard to make sure this world stays full of interesting things for you to see. I promise they’ll be yours, someday. I really do.”

Beside him, Tina shifts, the effects of the spells beginning to wane. Her eyes flutter open, meeting Newt’s before falling on their son. Her body seems to _shift_ , come alive under the sheets. And their son seems to know.

“ _Newt_ —” He quickly hands him over, and Tina nearly takes both of them into her arms. She holds their son with one hand, and grips Newt’s shirt with the other, pulling him in, lips crashing against his. “Newt, honey—”

“I know.”

“Oh, he’s beautiful.”

“He really is.”

And they’re both crying, both a sobbing mess in each other’s arms as their son gives a little cry, then quiets, wrapping his tiny fingers around one of Newt’s. A nurse comes by to help Tina breastfeed, but other than that, the three of them are alone. Newt settles on the bed by their side, stroking Tina’s hair.

“Did I do alright?” she murmurs, looking up at him.

“You did wonderfully, my dear.”

“I didn’t hurt him?”

“He is perfect, and perfectly happy. I don’t think you could have done a more splendid job.”

Tina nods. “I suppose not.”

“Tina.” Newt lifts her chin. “You were incredible. You did something almost impossible. To have a child is to risk everything. The statistics on survival rates—”

“Newt.”

“…Yes.”

She sighs. “I love you.”

He smiles, sinking lower into the bed with her, wrapping himself around the both of them. They are a family, he realizes, and for the first time he truly understands that he is no longer some nebulous thing connected to his mother and father. He is fully separate, bound in name and blood only. This – this _thing_ he now has in his hands. It is _real_ and it is his own.

The realization brings tears to his eyes all over again, and he lies next to his wife and son and considers their place among all the things in this world he’s seen.

 _Certainly the most fantastic_ , he decides, and surrenders to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @weatheredlaw
> 
> (also SUPER BRIEFLY: there's a swedish study on how father's/partners can stand in for that necessary skin-to-skin contact needed directly after birth to ease crying and help transition into the first breastfeeding, and even though it was done super recently i really like the idea, considering newt has acted as a mother to his creatures for so long. anyway.)


End file.
